Mountain lions increasingly encounter humans in suburban and exurban areas, requiring evidence-based coexistence strategies that protect both people and predators.
Mountain lions in urbanized landscapes experience chronic stress from human disturbance, constrained movement corridors, and fragmented habitat. Individual lions displaced by habitat development into suburban areas face escalating conflict risk that often ends in lethal removal. The welfare of urban-adjacent mountain lions depends on maintaining functional wildlife corridors, reducing livestock vulnerability to prevent depredation that triggers removal permits, and educating residents to coexist with occasional mountain lion presence.